Catherine Perry Hargrave’s History of Playing Cards and
Bibliography (Dover, New York, 1966) lists a number of early
books on euchre: John W. Keller, The
Game of Euchre (1887, Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York, 82 pages);
Cavendish, The Pocket Guide to Euchre (1890, Thomas de la Rue & Co. Ltd.,
London); “Berkeley,” Écarté and Euchre (1890, George Bell & Sons, London, 79 pp.);
Progressive Euchre (1890, author unidentified, Joseph E. Church, Cincinnati), and
R. F. Foster, Call Ace Euchre (1905, Brentano’s, New York).
Hargrave’s bibliography lists also four books on 500, the deliberately invented
“super” euchre game commissioned by the United States Playing Card Company,
all published between 1899 and 1909.

We now know, through the sweep of Amazon.com, Abebooks.com and the rest of the internet, that
there were a few 19th century books on euchre that Hargrave overlooked, including, at least,
The Game of Euchre with Its Laws (1850; author and publisher unknown;
we have only seen this book listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and mentioned in the next
book); The Law and Practice of the Game of Euchre by “a Professor” (1862,
T. B. Peterson & Bros., Philadelphia, 134 pages);
Euchre: How to Play It (ca. 1886,
author unidentified, Griffith, Farran, Okeden & Welsh, London and Canberra, 124 pp.);
A. Howard Cady, Euchre: A Treatise on
the Game and Its Origin: With Descriptions of
Its Several Varieties etc. (1895, American Sports Pub. Co.,
44 pp.), and Euchre – and How to Play It (1897, 1903, author unidentified,
United States Playing Card Company, Cincinnati, 34 pp.).

Since the publication of Foster’s book in 1905, there seem to have been no books
published specifically on euchre until the first edition of The Columbus Book of Euchre
was published in 1982. All those earlier books
are out of print and hard to find. Foster was
the author also, however, of Foster’s Complete Hoyle, reprinted in 1963 and
accessible (1897, 1963, J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia).
It contains a long section on euchre, including a subsection headed “METHODS OF
CHEATING.”

The publication of The Columbus Book of Euchre in June of 1982 was followed quickly
by the publication in August of the same year of Gary Martin’s Euchre:
How to Play and Win (1982, Martin, Fort Wayne, 64 pp.).
Both Martin’s book and the first edition of The Columbus Book of Euchre were
“desktop” publications created before personal computers made “desktop
publishing” a household possibility and are, therefore, both a little rough
typographically. Since 1990 and the advent of
personal computer “desktop publishing,” a number of other books and a videotape on
euchre have appeared. And while they are
understandably more attractive than Martin’s book and the first edition of The
Columbus Book of Euchre, Martin’s and The Columbus Book of Euchre remained
the only good books on euchre in print until the appearance of Joe Andrews’ new
book. Reviews of Andrews’, Martin’s
and other books in print on euchre follow, along with reviews of those out-of-print 19th
century books we have managed to find.

This is an instructive and useful little book.
And it’s one of only two books in print oneuchre that get almost everything
right (theother is The Columbus Book of
Euchre).There are no glaring errors.

There are some highly helpful hints on whatto lead, and an
interesting suggestion to lead anine to save an ace (pp.
25-27. The author
may have a point, but he does not explain it).
There’s an interesting section on bid euchre(both
“partner” and “buck”), with good in-struction.

There are some annoying grammaticalerrors, such as “lead”
as the past tense of“lead” going on for several pages
beginning

at page 23 (the author finally gets it right with
“led” at page 32), and some syntactical num-ber
confusion (e.g., at p. 32, “If diamonds
istrump . . . ,” and at p. 38, “In
buck euchreeach player plays for himself . . . .
Each playerbids on the number of tricks each feels they
can win”).

And because the book was printed beforepersonal computers made
“desktop publish-ing” a household possibility, it’s
not the mostattractive book out there:
The only color is onthe cover, and the small type makes it a
littlehard to read.

One of Joe Andrews’ criteria for a “book,”it seems, is that it must
have at least 100 pages.In correspondence with me in 2001 over theprospect
of collaborating on a euchre book,he referred to The Columbus Book of Eu-chre
as a “Booklet”;* and in a list of five oth-er euchre books in his own new
book, TheComplete Win at Euchre, he takes care topoint out that only
Wergin on Euchre hasmore than 100 pages.

And, I must admit, The Columbus Book ofEuchre, listed at 90 pages, does not
contain90 full pages of euchre.
Subtracting title pages,

index pages and the like, and solely decorative
illustrations taking up whole pages reduces it to75.
By similar subtractions you can get TheComplete Win at Euchre’s
171 pages downto 151, but that’s still more than Wergin’s 137.

So if I want a competitive euchre “book,” itseems, I have to get those
skinny 75 pages upto 150 or more.
Taking a tip from Joe’sbook, I have found some ways:

– Use big type and lots of inner headlines.
If I
cut my average 38 lines a page to Joe’s 30,
I’m up to 95 pages already.

– Use lots of repetition.
State the rules twice
(once in “The Basics,” once “Official”).
In

describing variants of the game, such as
“British Euchre” and nine different ways
people all over North America play bid
euchre, state the complete rules for each
variant in each description instead of merely
the contrasting rules that make each variant
unique. Now I have 113 pages.

– Pad the book with pages having nothing
specifically to do with euchre, such as a
four-page history of the United States
Playing Card Company, a two-page history
of playing cards, and seven pages of “Pro-
files in Courage Euchre” (at a page apiece,
with plenty of white space if there is not a
whole page of nice things to say) about peo-
ple the readers have never heard of who
have not made much of a difference in the
history of euchre (I will grant that three of
Joe’s ten “Profiles in Courage Euchre” might

be warranted). Now I have 126 pages.

– Throw in articles by other writers, slap-
dash (Joe wrote less than three-fourths
of the text of his own book. Some
out-
side contributions just barely touch on the
subject matter. The inserts include a two-
page history of jacks, by Daphne Tregear,
and five pages on “Euchre Math” written
by Richard Freedman, which, although
somewhat interesting, is of little practical
use). I’m up to 144 pages now (without
counting the history of the United States
Playing Card Company or anything else
twice) – and I’ve passed Wergin.

– Pad the book further with three full pages of
pictures of the four full suits of cards available
in each euchre hand and accounts of 23
“Classic Hands” the author has observed,

with a one-page illustration of each (that’s 47
more pages). Now I have 184 pages.
Re-
store the title and index pages and the dec-
orations and I’m just a page shy of 200.
Hope you like my “book.”

Although Joe’s book describes “British Eu-chre” and nine variants
of bid euchre in excru-ciating detail, there’s not a word on two-han-ded
euchre or euchre solitaire. Let’s
face it,it’s just another thin book on euchre.
Thatdoesn’t mean it’s a bad book.
It’s not. Mostof it is correct
and helpful. My general criti-cism
is that it’s heavy on example and lean onprinciple.

There are too many possible situations tocover, teaching by example.
The “BiddingSkills – Twenty Questions” in Joe’s bookdeal
only with whether the dealer should pick

up or turn down in the given scenarios; thereare no specific
lessons for the players in first,second or third chairs, and none for the dealer
on second round. Eight examples are
givenin the “Opening Leads” quiz, but no instructivescenarios for
leads to second and subsequenttricks.
And the four “Play of the Hand” sam-ples given are rather meager.
The “ClassicHands” are but 23 out of thousands.

Joe does do well on his examples, although Ifind debatable his conclusions on
Nos. 8 and20 of his “Bidding Skills” questions, on Nos. 1,
3 and 8 of his “Opening Leads” quiz, and onNos. 3 and 4 of his
“Play of the Hand” ex-amples (try them yourself).
I did not review allthe “Classic Hands” – they are presented as
much as profiles in courage excitement as rightor wrong – but I
noticed that Joe overlooked agood potential opening lead on the first one.

I said most of the book is correct.
Somethings aren’t. For
example:

– Joe speaks of euchre played in the 18th cen-
tury. There is no evidence that euchre
was
played before the 19th century.
(Écarté andJucker, each believed by various scholars to
be the root of euchre, also date only to the
early 19th century.)

– Joe says that as dealer’s partner you should
order “anytime you have two strong
trump. . . ” (p. 51; my emphasis).
I don’t think so.
Good way to queer your partner’s loner.
Trust him, if you have nothing else or have
an answer to other suits.
Why do you sup-
pose the Canadians have that silly rule requi-
ring the partner to go alone if he assists?

– Joe says, categorically, to “never call a loner

when the score is 8-8” (p. 59; his emphasis).
If the hand in his “Bidding Skills” question
No. 17, where he first suggests that, had lower trump or one fewer trump, it would be
a perfect example of when you should go
alone with eight points, to keep your partner
from taking the lead on first trick and being unable to lead trump back to you.

– Incredibly, he says that if you have 6 or 7
points to your opponents’ 9, “a loner . . . is
a virtual forced call, especially if you hold
junk!’ (emphasis his).”

– There’s a questionable use of the word
“sandbagging.”

– And Joe’s book contains constant reference
to “auction” and “bidding” to make trump.
Aside from the power of jacks, perhaps the

most distinctive thing about euchre – as op-
posed to other trick-taking games such as
bridge and spades – is that in
euchre you do
not make trump by bidding.
You order,
assist, pick up or name trump in euchre (as
in the extinct games écarté and triumph).
The only bidding that goes on in euchre –
i.e., claiming in advance the number of tricks
you will take – is in the many versions of bid
euchre, which, all taken together, do not
claim nearly as large a following as the stan-
dard game.

I would like to attribute a few things in Joe’sbook to Natty Bumppo, since
Joe didn’t bother:

1. The etymology of the word
“joker,” on
page 7, is taken from a hypothesis in David
Parlett’s Oxford Guide to Card Games
extended in The Columbus Book of Eu-

chre, without attribution to either (but
with “Jucker” misspelled).

2. And Joe’s special thanks
to Harvey Lapp
for his “Ten Commandments of Euchre”
(pp. 43-48) overlooks Lapp’s own ac-
knowledgment, on his Commandments
page, of Natty Bumppo for his special
contributions and editing.

3. Joe heaps acknowledgment on
John Mc-
Leod, proprietor of the Card Games web
site, but does not mention McLeod’s
gracious acknowledgment of Natty
Bumppo and The Columbus Book of
Euchre (“the definitive guide to American
euchre,” McLeod calls it) on the Card
Games euchre page; and Joe ignores his
own previous
credit to me, in which he
says, “ . . . [S]ome very fine books have

been written about [euchre] strategy and
psychology. You may want to try The
Columbus Book of Euchre by Natty
Bumppo. It is very down to earth and
chock full of information!”

You will find the most amazing revelationin Joe’s
book at page 99, in a “Profile inCourage Euchre” of
“Newt’s”:
“In Septem-ber of 2003, the first store in the United
States to offer playing cards and relatedmerchandise held its grand opening.”
Whattricks the memory plays on us! I had
thoughtthat I had been buying playing cards and po-ker chips at drug stores
and dime stores sincethe 1940’s.

Joe does take care of his patrons and clients.
We have not only Newt’s, and the history of

the United States Playing Card Company,and the oozing
glorification of Beth (“Tweet-ie Heart”) Cole and her Euchre Club on line,
but also the promotion of MSN and threeother on-line euchre
playing sites – overPogo and Yahoo!, which get only one lineapiece,
and without mention of Playsite, oneof the most venerable venues for playing
eu-chre on line.Yahoo! and
Pogo are far andaway the most popular sites for playing eu-chre on line:
None of the sites exalted byJoe comes close to Pogo, and Pogo doesnot come
close to Yahoo! (and there arereasons).

One more thing: Let’s just pretend
wenever heard of “progressive”
tournamentscoring: That’s
not euchre.top

Gallagher’s booklet has a Gorenesque pointsystem for
evaluating a euchre hand.
Andwhile that is its salient feature, its best feature
(aside from the misuse of the words “bid” and“bidder”; see
review of Joe Andrews’ book,above) is the second little paragraph in the
In-troduction:
“Euchre is a bidder’s game.
Youmust bid at every opportunity. . . .
Just to sitback and pass or hope to euchre your oppo-nents is a loser’s
game. . . .”

Another section, the three “Most CommonErrors by Euchre
Players,” is right on:
Passinga makeable hand, failing to lead trump on of-fense,
leading trump on defense.
(Trumping a

partner’s ace is left out, but it is enjoined – in
bold type – on the previous page.)

The point system assigns four points to aright bower, three
to a left, two to each othertrump card, and one to each ace in
the offsuits, for a total of 20 “high card” points.
Thenthe author concludes, and attempts to demon-strate,
that you need 10 points to go alone,and that you should order
or pick up with 7points (but need only 5 to “assist”
– and that’sa flaw, since it encourages a dealer’s
partner,who normally should keep his mouth shut).

But the math is a little fuzzy.
For example,

the author states that if you have 8 points, youropponents
have 6, your partner has 3, and thepack has 3.
The actual probability is, the op-ponents have
6.7, the partner has 3.3, and
the pack (i.e., the three cards remaining
“bur-ied,” or unseen) has only 2.
On average eachhand is 167 per cent as strong as the pack.

The author says, at page 3, that a 10-pointhand “cannot
be euchred.”
Accompanying thediscussion of the point system is a one-page
chart of “biddable” hands from 7 to 13 points.
The chart lists four possible “10-point” hold-ings,
all of which can be euchred, but omitstwo – (1)
a left with three other trump and anoutside ace, which also can be
euchred (byRight-Ace-x of trumps held by an opponent),

and (2) a holding of five trumps without bow-ers,
which is the only “10-point” hand thatcannot
be euchred. The
error lies in ranking a9, 10 or queen of trumps as high as
an ace orking.

And the author’s assertion that you musthave at least
10 “high card points” to go aloneseems rather timid
from one who says youmust bid to win.
Natty Bumppo’s ColumbusBook of
Euchre, at pp. 42-43, lists four “8-point”
holdings that are excellent candidatesfor loners, and even a
hand of 2 or 3 pointsthat will do the trick on a long
shot. And Gary
Martin, at p. 20 of his Euchre: How to
Playand Win, shows a “7-point” hand he
recom-mends going alone on.

None of which is to say the point system isshoddy – by and
large, it works.
But it isflawed.
For further examples:

(1) It fails to distinguish between the valueof a “next”
ace and one of the other color.
Anace off color is much more valuable.

(2) It fails to evaluate distribution.
TheGoren point system in bridge gives a void thesecond highest
value, comparable to that of theleft bower in Gallagher’s
euchre system.
Alsoin euchre a singleton ace is worth more than adoubleton
ace; an ace heading a three-cardsuit is virtually worthless, and
a two-suitedhand has a value not addressed by Gallagher.

(3) It gives no value to kings.
While a kingoften has no value in euchre, it has tremen-dous
value in a two-suited hand or if its ace isburied or in partner’s
hand.

Another problem with playing by the num-bers is that each
euchre hand is situational –it’s not only the
cards that matter, but also theposition (where you
sit at the table, which isso much more important in a
short game likeeuchre than in a long game like bridge orspades),
and the score (many things you willdo at 6 or 7, or at 8
or 9, or when your oppo-nents are at 6 or 7 or at 8 or 9, you
will notdo at other scores).
You play by Gallagher,I play by instinct, and I’ll beat
you.

Finally, would it be picayune to point out that the author has the horse on the rider
(p. 45)? That he thinks “next”
is “Nix”? That he lacks true bravado,
or humor, as on page 39, where he writes, “Dealing out of turn . . . is
considered poor sportsmanship if . . . done intentionally”? Not in Columbus, where stealing the deal is part of the game!

I had heard about this book; I wanted to like this book.
It’s OK; it’s interesting. But it
is too formulaic: It does not capture the
intuition, the essence, of euchre.

This book might be more appropriately ti-tled Euchre for Dummies,
or, even, Cardsfor Dummies, so basic and simplistic it is.
And thin: Of 76 pages,
18 are blank, title ordedication pages; 4 are full-page illustrations,
and 9 more are nearly full-page illustrations –all for
$8.95.
Of the 45 pages remaining, fourare devoted to Old Maid instructions
on cardplaying: Which
is the higher card, a 9 or a10?
a king or an ace? What is a
trick? Whatis “trump”?
What does it mean to “lead”?
to“follow suit”?

It may have been written by a Dummy, so

weak is the grammar.
The author seems tohave particular difficulty with syntactical
num-ber – for example, on page 49 alone:
“Beforeeither one of them pick up or order. . . , they. . . ”;
“Unless they are a novice . . . ,” and
“Learn how to assess another player’s benchstrength
so that you can compare your own totheirs.
When someone else makes trump, youmay have some clues about
their strength”(emphasis added).

Inconsistency in use of terms also is dis-tracting:
On page 12, the word “round” isused as a synonym for a
“hand” of five tricks.

Then, on page 14, “hand” means
“trick.”Then, in the glossary, you are
instructed,“A round and a trick get used
interchange-ably sometimes” (emphasis added).
And thisglossary entry instructs you further, “Don’t
let this get confusing”!
The glossary entryadds, “The whole game is over when one
team has won . . . 10 points.You can callall of the games leading up to that, ‘games’as
well” (emphasis added).
To add to the(interdicted) confusion over
“round,” theauthor terms the trump making process
“go-ing around the table.”

“Double suited,” according to this book,does not mean
having only two suits in yourhand, but having two cards
in one suit.

Not that the instruction on euchre is all thatclear:
An essay on an advantage in being“double-suited”
(i.e., having two cards in asuit, remember) indicates
not that you shouldthrow one card from an Ace-high off suit
tosignal partner, but that you should alwaysthrow off a
singleton – even if you have notrump (which would,
worse than failing to sig-nal partner correctly, give him a false
signal).

And we are told that if a player on the team

that made trump reneges, his team “forfeits the game.”
Just what does that mean (given the glossary’s confusion over what “game”
means)?

Then, there is this funny rule that the second hand cannot order without going alone
(maybe they really play this way in Canada).

For all that, this book is very attractive typographically – an obvious product of
desktop masturbation (yes, I can see the blurb
coming: “‘Typographically
very attractive’ – Natty Bumppo, author, The
Columbus Book of Euchre”).

Euchre According to Wergin containsgood basic instruction,
and, unlike mostbooks of Hoyle, recognizes the way mostpeople
play the game. But
it is short on witand intellect, and it makes a number of errors
and omissions.

(pp. 6-7, 74-75, and 123) shared by vast
numbers of euchre players.
Overreachingand deception such as “stealing the deal”
areas much a part of the game in many circles asgoing alone.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world outthere in the heartland, and the
game goes tothe alert as well as the swift.

In some passages the author contradictshimself.
For example:

– At the top of page 25 he defines “the bridge”
as the dealing team’s being at 6 or 7 points andthe opposing
team’s being at 8 or 9.
In thevery next paragraph he defines it as a maneu-

ver by the dealer’s opponents to protect
their position.
(Actually, the correct termfor the maneuver is
“ordering at the bridge.”And “the
bridge” is simply a score of 9 points.If the player
to the dealer’s left is “at thebridge,” he must
order the dealer when thedealer’s team has 6 or 7 points to
protect hisown team’s position.That’s “ordering at thebridge” –
similar to the “Columbus coup” inHoosier play.)

– At page 28, the author says, “If you take thefirst
trick in a suit and your partner discards,do not lead back the
suit he has shown . . . .”Later on the very same page
he says, “Ob-serve your partner’s discards . . . .
In manycases, that may be your best next lead . . . .”

– And at page 51, “If partner named the
trumpand you [at third hand] have a high and a lowtrump,
chances are that the fourth player maynot have a trump.
If a high card is not played,you may be embarrassed when the fourth
handovertakes the play of a low trump.”
(Anyway,the reasons to play high exist despite the un-
likelihood the dealer holds trump, not becauseof it.)

In other passages, the author is simplywrong:

– At page 31: “With a score of 9 to 8 in the
dealer’s favor, it is best for the dealer to at-tempt a hand a shade lighter
than normal.”The opposite is true:
Better to let the oppo-

nents score a point than to go out euchred.
Itis when the score is 9 to 8 against the dealerthat
the risk is worthwhile, as the author pointsout elsewhere.

– At page 47, the author states that a dealer’s
turning down a right bower indicates a 62½per cent probability
that the left is in the thirdhand and a 37½ per cent probability
that itis in the deck.
Actually, the probabilities are38½ per cent (5/13) in the second
hand, 38½per cent (5/13) in the third, and 23 per cent(3/13)
in the deck. The
probabilities are in theeldest hand’s favor not because of a
62½ percent probability his partner holds the left, butbecause
of a 61½ per cent probability that thedealer’s
partner does not (third hand’s plus

deck’s probabilities.
Given the second hand’sfailure to “assist,” the
likely probability of thethird hand’s holding the left is,
it is true, some-what higher than 38½ per cent; but it is not
mathematically determinable, and certainlynowhere near 62½ per
cent).

– At page 49, the author suggests that trump-ing a partner’s
ace is “often” OK.
While it isoccasionally OK (as it is in bridge and
spades, not just in euchre), this is very badadvice to a beginner; and
beginners may bethe major market for a book of instruction.
Trumping a partner’s ace is one of the twoerrors most
common to beginners (the otheris reneging with the left bower).
The bestadvice to beginners is, “Never trump your

partner’s ace,” the very phrase criticized bythe author.
Later, when they know the game,novices can learn the rare occasions
to trumpa partner’s ace.

– At page 83, the author suggests that playersmight wish
to play to only 7 points, using 4’sand 3’s for markers
“as the euchre players didback in the 18th century.”
Maybe the 19thand early 20th centuries (most Hoyle referen-ces
set the game at 5 points, not 7 or 10), butnot the 18th.
There is no evidence of thegame earlier than the 19th century.

Further, the author’s legendary super player“Freddie
Fox” would not draw applause fromreal euchre players on
three of the six hands

The author’s chapter on “Euchre Odds andPercentages,”
seemingly arcane, is but basicprobability theory taught in
freshman math.Although it’s interesting, anyone needing thechart will get
lost in the shuffle.

Many of the author’s suggested “OfficialRules” are
likewise superfluous, for example:

– III-1-a, “Riffle the pack at least three timesand
follow with several over and under shuf-

fles. Be careful not
to expose the bottomcard,” is basic Hoyle, not just euchre,
and ismore a matter of etiquette and good sensethan rules.

– Likewise, III-2, “Pone’s Right to Shuffle”;
IV-1, “Number of Cards to be Cut,” and IV-3, “Cut
Before Dealing,” are rules of Hoyle,not just euchre.

– Point penalties suggested in IV-3 b and cfor refusing
to offer the cut and refusing to cutare ludicrous.
Has the author not heard of the“Columbus cut”?

– VI-6, requiring the dealer to answer truth-

fully an inquiry as to trump, and forbidding a
player’s asking what specific card was pickedup, not only is
ridiculous, but toys with the FirstAmendment.
A better rule (of personal beha-vior, not of the game) is,
“Pay attention, andbeware of the liar!”

In sum, the proposed rules are too arcane,too silly, and too many.

Omissions: Not included in Wergin (butincluded
in Natty Bumppo’s Columbus Book
of Euchre) are rules and suggestions for eu-chre
solitaire, two-handed euchre with “wid-ows” or
“blinds” for third and fourth hands,and three-handed
buck (bid) euchre.top

Fred Benjamin tells us in the very first section ofhis book Euchre
Strategies that he wins two outof three games, on average, on Yahoo!
Any euchreplayer who tells you he wins two-thirds of his gamesis (a) lying,
or (b) cheating, or (c) selecting his com-petition very carefully.

I am acquainted with the author through e-mailand other interaction on line,
and I have no partic-ular reason to suspect him of lying or cheating.
Hegives us answer (c):
" . . . I win so often in partbecause of my partner, . . . with whom I
play ap-proximately 30 per cent of my games.
Our play-ing pattern is simple:
Create a table and play withwhomever sits with us." 1

If you have an established partner, and play mostof your games against players who are not
regularpartners, and if you know what you’re doing, and

play generally inferior competition, you prob-ably can
win two-thirds of your games. The
inferior competition, in this case, is indicatedby the Yahoo! ratings
the author discloses forfive of six of his own “nics” – 1740, 1587,
1545,1753, 2467 and 1710.
Except for the 2467, theratings are mediocre, by Yahoo! standards,
andindicate avoidance of “advanced” competition.2

I would not mention such statistical puffing,which might seem otherwise
irrelevant, exceptfor one thing:
This book is based largely onstatistics and mathematical analysis, with the
helpof a computer simulator the author has devisedfor the purpose (useable
also as an independentcomputer game or practice table, and availableon
line). So, consider the
source; and rememberwhat Mark Twain (an avid euchre player) said:
“There are three kinds of lies:
Lies, damned lies,

When this book was published, a person who hasplayed the author on line
quite a bit exclaimed to me,“How can he write a book on euchre?
He can’t evenplay euchre."
That does not bother me. Leo
Duro-cher, Casey Stengel and Sparky Anderson all werebetter baseball managers
than players. What bothersme
is that the author of this book cannot write.
Howdo you follow someone

* who uses redundancies like “initial opening lead,”
“first lead on next trick,” and “opening lead 2nd
thru 4th tricks”?

* who uses malaprops like “hole card” for the card
turned up, and “kitty” for the stock or talon?

The language distracts. If
you can figure outwhat a “finesse” is from the author’s wordy
andconvoluted definition and explanation, you under-stood the concept a lot
better to begin with thanhe does now.

Look at “kitbitz” [sic] and “kitty” in the defini-tions
section. “Kitbitz” may
be a typographicalerror instead of a misspelling of “kibitz,” since
itappears out of alphabetical order, where “kibitz”would be; but
it’s wrongly defined in any event.5
“Kitty” is defined as the three unseen cards re-maining in the deck
after the deal – “also calledthe talon,” the book says.
“Talon” is correct (oryou can say “stock,” or “deck,”
or “pack”) – butnot “kitty.”
A “kitty,” in games, is something ofvalue (money, usually;
cf. poker).
It’s the oppo-

site of a
talon6 – just as “hole card” is the oppo-site of a turned
card: “Hole card,” a term unique
to poker, indicates a card hidden from the viewof other players.

Section 9.15 consists entirely of a table pur-porting to identify
“% Probability of opponentshas ‘x’ trump.”
I couldn’t get past the syntax:One opponent’s probability? (“has”)
Or both’s?(“opponents”)
(And, what’s the “of ” for, follow-ed by a verb?)
In either event I found suspiciouscells in the table.
Just to be sure, I ran it by a ma-thematician.
The table is botched. Not that
any-one needs such a table to begin with:
If you don’thave the answer intuitively, you need to play more.

More confusion is created by diagrams that placethe deal with East in a
north-south-east-west layout.There’s no law against giving
East the deal (and East

will eventually get to deal in every card game, ofcourse).
But conventionally, in diagrams, Southhas the deal and West has the lead.
We might beable to adjust to the author’s giving the deal to East
instead of South, but then he gives us a diagram withNorth as the
dealer (the book puts you at South, asyou would be in a computer game,
and rotates thedeal).

Then there are the “Duh!” factors:
The firstof seven listed occasions on which to lead trumpon defense is,
“You only have trump.” (Duh!)
Thefirst of six listed ways to identify a void in anotherplayer’s hand
is, “If a player does not follow suit.”(Duh!)

There is no history, no humor.
The only formof euchre presented or discussed in the book is thestandard
American four-player partnership game

– no two-person, three-person, or bid euchre.
Thesection on rules is equally spare – there is no mentionof irregularities, such
as dealing out of turn, playingout of turn, or reneging. 7

The book contains good advice, by and large; butthe presentation is
textbookish. “Confused
yet?” theauthor asks in section 8.1 (of 103 numbered sectionsand
subsections), on page 60 (of 90).
“You shouldbe,” he answers.Q.E.D.8
The 17-page section 3,“Opening Bid,” reminds me of Thomas
Gallagher’spoint system in Winning at
Euchre. If you need
to remember Benjamin’s percentages (not all of themdocumented) or
Gallagher’s “points,” you’ll be hand-cuffed trying to
play.

Benjamin gives generally good mathematical expla-nations of how and why
certain ploys and maneuverswork, but his instruction is for the
cognoscenti: It’s

not much help to a beginner or an intermediate play-er.
There are easier ways to learn:
Play cards, forinstance.
Euchre should be fun; and reading about itshould be, too.
This book may be the best endorse-ment yet of Euchre:
The Grandpa Lou Way.

And the mathematical analysis is not quite as relia-ble as it might appear.
The botched opponent(’s)(’)(?)trump probability table was noted
above. For anotherexample,
in section 3.6 the author attempts to demon-strate statistically that
“ordering at the bridge” is notsuch a good idea.
In his test of a “good” hand withouta stopper, he compares the
results of 25 simulations of“donation” against the results of 25
other simulationsof passing.
That’s not only not enough simulations forconclusive results; it’s
also simply bad science not touse the same deals to examine both ways of
playing,with such small samples.
He uses the same flaweddichotomy in a test of a “bad” hand that
does not take

into account
at all the devastating effect of giving up aloner
to the opposition at a score ahead 9 to 7 with thedeal coming your way.

For another example: The chart
of probabilities ofwho will win and who will lose, at certain scores (in
section 8.1), is presented with a stated assumption of
“players . . . equally matched and skilled.”
Actually,it assumes that each player is Fred Benjamin.
He’sthe one that gave each player its values.
This factcolors the results of all simulations cited in the entirebook.

And even the assumption that each player is FredBenjamin may be overly
optimistic. Each player is,
after all, a robot; and others and I have found play byBenjamin’s
robots that reminds us of the tinheads onYahoo! and Pogo.
Can you imagine basing conclu-sions of good play on simulations of hands
played by

a table full of bots from Yahoo! ?

I do think that Benjamin has built a better bot,and that Yahoo! and
Pogo (and the other internetgame sites) should beat a path to his door
to seekto license it from him.
But it’s not yet a good e-nough bot to play with the boys, and the
simula-tions you get from Benjamin’s all-bot tables arenot
reliable.9

Some good advice from the book:

* Playing aggressively is required, but playing
recklessly is taking aggression too far. s. 3.2

* Order and call aggressively when you have a
lead of five points or more, to limit your
opponents’ opportunities to call and make
loners that would get them back in the game.

s. 8.4. (The author calls
this tactic “soft dona-
tion.”
That’s a term I had not encountered be-
fore, and it’s interesting.)

* Lead the king of hearts from jack-10 of clubs,
jack of spades and ace of diamonds when your
left-hand opponent has ordered the 10 of hearts
into his partner’s hand. s. 5.9
Most players would
lead the ace of diamonds or the jack of spades;
and I would have led the ace of diamonds until I
ran simulations (in the Euchre
Laboratory, not on
Benjamin’s simulator) supporting the trump lead
on defense here, indicating that a spade lead might
be second best, and suggesting that the diamond
lead might be the worst (the author did not cite
any simulations).

Some not so good:

* Lead away from a guarded left bower when the

dealer’s partner has
ordered up. s. 5.5(2,3)
That might produce an occasional euchre, but it
could deprive you of a stopper. In
general the
book and the simulator lean too heavily on lead-
ing trump on defense.
The book advises you in
section 5.5(1) to lead trump through the maker
(i.e., dealer’s partner) if you hold right-ace.
That
would deprive you of an end play.
And the author
contradicts himself on this point:
In section 5.6.2
he says, “Do not lead a trump . . . when attempt-
ing a euchre.” 10

* Always open a defense against a loner with an ace
even if you have only one. s. 5.8
This defies an
almost universally accepted prohibition:
Do not
lead an ace against a loner if you have only one;
do lead an ace if you have two. The
author claims
to have run simulations to prove his point, and ar-
gues that the ace lead is necessary to keep from
getting squeezed on a doubleton. What he
has

failed to recognize is the corollary that you may
treat a king-high doubleton as a second “ace” in
your hand.
(The reason not to lead ace if you
have only one is to avoid squeezing your partner
if he has two. You
lead an ace if you have two
to avoid getting squeezed yourself.)

This book is unlike any other book on euchre.
Although a bit disorganized (you find “what to lead”all over the
place), it is a tour de force, full of pie

charts and based on what
must have been tons ofcomputer research.
It’s a noble effort to quantifyconventional (and some unconventional)
wisdom.

But some things cannot be quantified.
The authorpromises, in section 3.2, to quantify the differencebetween
aggressive and reckless but admits, in theanalysis of one hand posited for
an example, “Thisis difficult to estimate.”
He winds up advising thereader, “You must use your own
experience.”

General footnote:
Section numbers given above refer to a 90-page printing with the title “Euchre
Strategies” on the cover.
Some readers may have an earlier, 55-page printing, in smaller type, with
the title “Euchre Challenge & Teacher” on the cover.
There was a relocation of the original section 3 to section 8 between the
printings, and thus a number of the section references above will not relate
to the earlier printing (in most if not all cases, the reader can add
1.0 to section numbers that do not work except for those beginning
with “8,” which must be read “3. . . . ”).

1 Another part of the pattern, not
reported by the author but reported to me by one who knows him on line, is
that he and his partner do not play again with anyone who beats them.
So, “play with whomever sits with us” may be a bit of a stretch, too.
(The author meant “whoever sits with us,” of course, not
“whomever.” The case
of a relative pronoun is dictated by its use in a subordinate clause, if
any. The clause, not the
pronoun, is the object of the preposition.
Lest this observation seem petty, note additional observations of unclear
writing following.) [back]

2 The author has confided to a mutual
acquaintance that he plays mostly, if not exclusively, in the intermediate
lounges. But he is skating on
thin ice. In a post
to the Euchre Science discussion group on Yahoo! a few weeks after
publication of his book, he said 75 per cent of Yahoo! players with
65 per cent or better winning records are cheaters.
Five of his own “nic” records published in his book show winning
percentages ranging from 65.9 to 76 per cent (it’s the 2467 nic
with the 65.9%).[back]

3 Twain attributed this remark to
Benjamin Disraeli – but a number of scholars believe Twain was lying
about that. No one has
found any other source for attributing the remark to Disraeli.[back]

4 The past tense of
“lead” (“lead” pronounced “led” is a heavy metal).[back]

5
“ . . . [T]he ability of a person to view more than one
hand during the play . . . .”
This definition suggests that even a player can kibitz.
A kibitzer (it’s a Yiddish word) is a spectator who offers
unsolicited advice. And he or she may
be allowed to watch only one hand. (We can
probably lay some of the blame here on Yahoo!, which also seems not
to know what the word means; but even Yahoo! recognizes that kibitzers can
see only hands that allow being seen.) [back]

6 Cards left over that can be claimed or are otherwise of use are usually
called a “dummy” or a “widow,” not a “kitty.”
But there is not even a dummy or widow in partnership euchre.[back]

7 And the rules section has the deal passing to the right instead of to
the left. Thank God for
“print on demand”:
This can probably be corrected soon, and at not too great a cost.[back]

8
Maybe that’s why the author moved section 3 of the book to
section 8 in the second printing – so that these remarks would appear
two-thirds of the way through the book, instead of on page 12.[back]

9
Here’s what a mathematician had to say (my brother, who has a Ph.D.
in mathematics and works in mathematics):

“Don’t trust anyone who uses simulation to get answers.
Simulation is very tricky business.
You’re trying to get answers by generating random numbers.
It takes not only thousands of repetitions but also keen statistical insight to reduce
the margin of error to a manageable amount.
(Everyone thinks he can simulate things these days, even engineers.)

“It seems that he produced the table of probabilities of trump holdings in
opponents’ hands via simulation and accepted the answers without question.
All those numbers could have been computed in closed form using elementary probability
theory. Even when you have to get
numbers by simulation, you still have to do a mathematical estimation to check them
with.

“It appears also that the author hasn’t published any confidence intervals
on his simulation data. Any biologist
would be able to give you confidence intervals on his rat lab data, but amateurs
at simulation don’t seem to see that this is required in simulation as well.
Most people think you just run the simulation a few hundred times and then average
the results. But to get confidence
intervals, so you can have some idea if your data is nonsense or not, you have to
collect the runs in batches, collecting variance data from each batch.
It’s a sophisticated statistical process.

“Simulation is for mathematically intractable problems to analyze the actual
play of the game, as opposed to the deal (which is almost always mathematically
tractable). In the play of the game,
each play is statistically dependent on the previous play or plays.
The number of possibilities grows exponentially with each play, so it becomes unsolvable
in closed form. Simulation is then the
only recourse. But simulation design
then becomes of the utmost importance and is only as good as your robots.

“Exponential error might not be an insurmountable problem on the outcome of
the play of a single hand in a game as simple as euchre; but in trying to simulate
the probability of winning the game at a given score, with many hands yet to play,
he’s being way too ambitious.” [back]

10 To be fair, the author presents that as a “KISS rule”
(“Keep it simple, stupid”), which may be meant for novices only
– but, like so many other things in the book, that is not entirely
clear.[back]top

This book is thinner than it is dumm. It
actuallycontains some good advice. It just doesn’t
coverthe subject. The content – 18 pages
of text (20 onthe “Kellerian” scale) – is not a whole lot more than
you get on euchre in a standard “Hoyle” encyclopedia.

You do get a deck of cards in the deal – and that’sa mixed blessing.
Printed on the face of each card areinstructions on what to do with it.
For example, on ajack:

Trump suit = RIGHT bower:
Lead to draw out other trumps.

Trump color = LEFT bower:
Save until right bower is played.

Non-Trump: Not much help.

That’s good advice as far as it goes, but all expe-rienced euchre players know
that there are times tolead the left – like, when your partner has madetrump,
or you hold left-ace-king.

The instructions printed on the aces, tens and ninesare OK (“Don’t get your hopes
up,” to paraphrase);but there’s a lot to quibble with on the kings and
queens:

Trump: Use to trump another player’s
trick.
Use to protect higher trumps.
Don’t lead until higher trumps are gone.

Non-Trump: Lead if A[ce] . . . is
gone.
Use to protect A[ce] . . . . [on the king!]
Not much help [on the queen].

But what does it mean – to a novice or “dummy”– to “protect”?

And the hell
“don’t lead,” if your partner has
made trump.

The subtitle of Euchre for Dummies is “A CardGame for the Rest of Us!”
What does that tell us?

The author is the co-author (with Omar Sharif) of

Card
Games for Dummies. Why does he refer
to the card values of the “8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2”?

Why does he tell us we are playing with a 32-card deck, when the deck included with the
pur-chase includes only 24 plus sixes and fours ofhearts and clubs for markers
(that makes only 28even if you count the markers – which, we wouldlike to
point out, are of the wrong suits; see “theProfessor’s”
explanation).

Why does he instruct us to place the talon andthe turned card in the middle of the table,
wheneven dummies know to place it to their left, as inall card
games in which the deal rotates, to signify

whose deal it is next?

Why does he say the jack of trump is “often”referred to as the “right
bower” (and the jack ofthe same color, other suit, “often” called the
“leftbower”)? Has he never played
euchre?

And what are these constant references to“bidding” ?
You don’t bid in euchre! Youorder,
assist, pick up, turn down, pass, or call!

Then there are the actual mistakes. Let’s
putit this way: If this book is the only
instruction youwill ever receive on euchre, you will play like adummy.top

The scary thing about this book is the “VolumeOne” printed on the cover and title page,
in largetype (but not advertised).
Messages inside theback cover announce that Volume Two will soonfollow (for $10)
and that you can sign up for con-tinuing monthly volumes at $30 for six months (with
free shipping). I was already wondering
how anyonecould write 92 pages about one game of solitaire, andnow here comes a whole
series?

But the book does not really present a game of soli-taire as card players normally
understand the term. TheThe only places you will find a game of euchre solitaire
that can be played with actual cards are still The Co-lumbus Book of Euchre, where it was presented in
the first edition, published in 1982, and remains, andon the Card Games web site,
where it is used with per-mission.

What Buchko’s Euchre Anyone? Euchre Solitaireis, is a workbook.
It consists of black and white pho-tographs of 41 euchre hands, with commentary
(in ad-

dition to title and advertising pages, score cards, and aone-page introduction,
with a little historical inaccuracy).

Each right-hand page, in the 82 pages of photo-graphs, presents only one of the four hands
dealt tothe table in a particular deal (plus the card turned).
You are asked what to do with the hand – whetherto order, pick, pass, or call.

The next page (the overleaf) shows all four handsin that deal, suggests what you should
have done,recites how the author thinks the hand would haveplayed out, and gives you
or your virtual opponentsa score for what you did, which you write down in atable
(“score sheet”) in the back of the book.
If youmove from page to page through the whole book,you will have “played”
enough hands this way forseveral full games (the author says “up to four”).

The commentary, which appears on both presen-tation page and overleaf, not only contains
advicebut comes also with discussions of rules, definitionsof euchre terms,
statements of mathematical proba-

bility, and occasional jest (and even with advertise-
ments for the author’s other work in half a dozeninstances, most of it not
related to euchre).

No game score is given in any of the scenarios,and good euchre players always want to
know thescore when confronted with a hand out of the blue.
But if you follow the author’s lead in taking one handafter another in a simulated
“game,” you’ll be keepingscore and know what it is on each hand (and
that maygive you an argument with the author on his strategy,on a hand or two, since
he never mentions the score).

The hands and the instruction are basic – the bookis not a collection of riddles
or difficult and mysterioushands. I
did not scour the book for mistakes.
Mostof the instruction is sound (e.g., “Two terms you hearall
the time in euchre, and should ignore, are ‘never’and ‘always’”).

But I have a problem with the photographs.
I

realize that color printing on every page remainsprohibitively expensive, even with the “print ondemand”
technology provided by the likes of cre-atespace.com,
booksurge.com and authorhouse.-com.
But desktop color laser printing is affordablethese days, and highly presentable.
You could printyour book at home or in the office; and a book thissize can be
“saddle-stitched” at home, like The Co-lumbus Book of Euchre (you don’t
have to send itto a bindery). And it still
can be sold on amazon.-com.

And aside from the black-and-white presentation,the photos simply are not very clear.
In some of thephotos it’s even a little hard to read the suits of someof the
cards – and not only because the pictures areblurry and not in color, but also because
the cardsare not sorted in the hands depicted in the photos.
It might make sense to show an unsorted hand onthe presentation page, where you are
figuring outwhat to do with a hand just dealt to you; but it makes

little sense on the overleaf, where the cards are being played out.

Even blurrier are color photographs of a lone hand in clubs, on the front cover, and
of the author, on the back cover. All for
$14.82 (with tax and shipping).
Caveat emptor.

You can tell that this book was written by a cou-ple of engineers – from such phrases as “the heuris-tic we’ve developed for counting how many tricks ahand can take” to “the BEAM (Baiyor-Easley Ad-vanced Mindmeld) Convention,” and from the divi-sion of the book into sections numbered and titled“§ 6.1.1.1 3 Low” and such.

And who but a couple of engineers would write awhole book about a game that is played by a total ofprobably only 27 people, all of them in southwestChimbley County, Indiana?

Anyway. Whatever. It’s all you ever wanted toknow about the strategies of bidding and readingyour partner in a game of euchre played with a 48-card deck (with two right bowers, two left bowers,two aces of hearts, and so on), in which trump ismade (or not, with both “high no” and “low no”as options) by bidding, not by ordering or calling.

The guys could have used an editor. You’llfind “trial” used as a verb, and a reference onpage 1 to a glossary but no mention of where

to find it (not in the table of contents, for sure).

And there’s no section on rules. You have towade through to the bottom of a long sixth para-graph, on page 7, of a section titled “IndianaDouble Deck Bid Euchre Overview,” to learnwho wins a trick on which both right bowersare played, or on which two aces of the suit ledare played (turns out it’s the first one played).

But who needs an editor? These guys are ex-perts. Just ask them. They present a section of“Statistics” on page 65 (§9.2) claiming to havewon two-thirds of the games they have playedas partners, with an “average bid” of 7.5, only a1.4 “average underbid,” a 30 per cent “chanceof recovering from an early set” and an averageof only 0.33 “non-desperation sets per game.”Not to mention the book’s pretentious title.“With 60 years of double deck bid euchre ex-perience between them,” they say in their bookdescription on Amazon.com and on their backcover blurb (where you will learn from one Rob-

in Thompson, another engineer, that it is “The best damneuchre book I’ve ever read!”), “the authors have a bit ofan obsession with the game. The game’s extensive use ofstrategy, the synergy of partnering and the complexity ofthe game have made them double deck bid euchre zeal-ots. Shocked and dismayed by the lack of literature ondouble deck bid euchre, the authors set out to correct thisgrievous wrong in the world of books on card games.”

You should buy this book. The photographs of theauthors with their enormous cigars are alone worth theprice of the book (the one tiny snapshot on Amazon-.com does not do the cigars justice). You can get iton Amazon.com or here.

You know what we think, though, if you’ve read TheColumbus Book of Euchre: The only reason to play bideuchre in the first place – whether with two decks, a fulldeck, or only half a deck – is not having four players tomake up a regular game (or having five or more, andwanting to get them all in the same game).

And if you have the time and energy to engage in part-nership “message” bidding, and to hold 12 cards in yourhand and play 12 tricks per hand, why not just play bridge?

The most interesting thing in Nick Buzzy'sEuchre Explained “Kindle" (I am so happy wedo not have to call this a book) is the very firstpage:

Limits of Liability / Disclaimer of Warranty

. . . The author and publisher makes [sic]no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy [emphasis added], applica-bility, fitness, or completeness of the con-tents . . . .

Wow! Wish I'd said that in my book! Thenmaybe I wouldn’t have been sued by that numb-nock in London, Ohio, who called “next” whenthe opponents had 8 points and got euchred tolose a championship game.

Or, what if I were Brian Williams, or the NewYork Times? I’d be off the hook!

This Kindle is a good enough inroduction tothe game although the author’s terminology andhistory are a little shaky. He has the game goingup the Mississippi River instead of downstream,

and in his glossary he calls the talon (re-mainder of the deck or pack after thedeal) the “kitty,” as Fred Benjamin does(and, worse, places it wrong in his graph-ic, to the dealer’s right – it should be onthe dealer’s left, to indicate who has thenext deal); and he omits one of the.primarydefinitions of “hand” (a unit of the game,not just the five cards held by one player).

And he makes the common mistake ofcalling the trump-making process “bid-ding.” You do not bid to make trump ineuchre. That is what is unique about eu-chre in games still played. You declaretrump by ordering, picking up, or calling.The bid has been already made in rulesof the game. All bids are three tricks.

I disagree that “The game is tough tolearn.” There are some strange rules,foreign to other card games; but theyare few and relatively easy to digest.What is tough is learning to play well.

And you use fives for scoring mark-

ers? Where did this guy grow up? Ohio? Michigan? Pennsylvania?

This publication is a good enough introduction to the game, but there
is nothing new in it (besides “Euchre Tells,” which is nothing but pop
psychology). And this publication is overlysimplistic – for example, there is a picture of the top five trump described as a “good hand.”

And some of the instruction is simply wrong – e.g., a subsection headed “Always take the trick.” This ignores the principles of “second hand low, third hand high” and getting the leadto your partner as soon as possible if he made trump.

The most egregious error in this publication, however, might be in “Scoring” (a subection of“How to Play Euchre” – there is no section or subsection on “Rules”), which says that oppo-nents euchring a loner score 4 points. Almost no one plays this way (Pennsylvania? Louisian-a?). Some people play that one of the opponents can elect to defend alone aganst a loner and score 4 for a euchre, but not many. Some (but even fewer) play that an opponent can elect to“defend alone” on any hand, for 4 points for a euchre. But, an automatic 4 for euchring a lo-ner? I don't think so. Maybe this guy is from Arkansas.

A chapter titled “Statistics” gives you largely useless mathematics such as “What are theodds [the author’s word – he meant “probability,” which was the form of his answer] youare dealt the same hand twice in a row?” and “What are the odds you have the followingnumber of cards in your hand matching the suit of the upcard?” (he meant “turned card,”of course; there is no such word as “upcard”). I have not checked his math because it isinconsequential; I’ll merely suggest that it is probably better than his grammar.

This publication will be helpful to anyone who has never played euchre, and to most be-ginners. But it is one “thin Kindle.”

Euchre for Beginners: The Very Basics (Euchre the Game) andEuchre for the Average Player: Go Hard or Go Home (Euchre the Game Book 1), by “COBER101” Amazon.com (“Kindles”), 2016, 12 and 13 pp. “(estimated),” $2.99 and $3.99, respectively

You
have to wonder, just from the covers– two perfect poker hands, in full
color:Astraight flush in hearts for
the Beginners, anaces-over-kings full house for the AveragePlayer
(with nary a jack nor a Benny).

These
would be thin books if they werebooks, but they’re not:They’re “Kindles,”the first with 198 “locations,”
equivalent toabout 12 to 17 pages; the second with 214“locations,” about 13
to 18 pages.

And
who is this author, “COBER101”?God
only knows (bet Amazon.com doesn’t).

Ah,
well.Beginners has
“Variations,”“Scoring,” “Basic Tactics,” “Going Alone,”“Team Tactics,” and
“Terminology.”Let’sgo there
first:It’s got some terms I’ve neverheard of, e.g.: “Cross trump,” defined as“When a player plays a trump on an
off suit”:Most people call this just “trump” (or “cut”).“Shout,” defined as “an opportunity to
decidetrumps and/or go alone – there are a maximum

of
2 shouts in every hand.” (Never heardof this – maybe it’s a term they use in Wis-consin.But if I’m reading the
definitioncorrectly, I’d say there are a maximum of 8“shouts” in every hand
of a 4-player partner-ship game.Maybe
he means a max for eachplayer.)And, “sleeping cards,” defined as“the cards that are not involved with
a hand.”(Never heard of them – maybe another Wis-consinism, or a Minnesotism – or
maybe theauthor got confused hearing about “sleepingcars” while playing
railroad euchre.Mostpeople call these
the “talon,” or the “deck,”or the “pack.”)

The grammar and syntax are just horrible.“Leading” is defined as a person; “trick” as“when
all the players play a card.” Nordoes
the author seem aware that the pluralof “trump” is “trump” (“trumps,” he says,as a noun, not just as a verb).

The
rest of the book is pretty standard stuff,if ungrammatical.“Variations” of the game

include two-handed
euchre, three-handed euchre, four-handedeuchre and six-handed euchre (well,
yeah, that’s possible; butthere are better things to do with six players –
e.g., make theodd couple sit out and take on the winners).

A
section called “The Cards” is pretty standard if you consid-er the “Benny”
standard (most people don’t, these days, certainlynot in the United States –
aha!Now we know!The author is aBrit!He writes “colours” for “colors”).

In
sum, the content of the Beginners book is about what youwill find in a
standard “Hoyle.”Get you a Hoyle
instead – it’sonly a little pricier, and you will get bridge, poker, and rummywith it (plus canasta, and dirty 8, and spades, and . . . ).Thereis some instruction in this book, but
nothing you won’t hear fromyour companions as you learn the game or find in
other books oneuchre.

And
now, Euchre for the Average Player.How can it be “Eu-chre the Game Book 1” (subtitle) when it follows
“Euchre theBook” (subtitle of Euchre for Beginners)?Maybe we need themathematical analysis of Eric
Zalas to answer this.

Nothing
new here, unless this item of brilliance: “You can'tget euchred” if you
have “five trumps.”

Dumb
terminolgy:“Double” for “doubleton.”Dumber
strat-egy:Discard your singleton ace
(it's no good if it's trumped).Misspelled:“Dependant” (you can’t chalk this
up as anotherBritishism because the usage here is adjectival – even theBrits
spell it “dependent” as an adjective).Misunderstood(not to mention passé):"Whilst" (for "while").

We’ve
seen this before:First there wasThomas Gallagher's Gorenesque point sys-tem for evaluating a euchre hand (Winningat Euchre, 1991); then Perry Romanowski’s,on a blog somewhere; then
the “MahaffeyScoring system,” and now Eric MBA’s Z-Score system – the best
yet, he says.

But
for all that, Mr. Zalas insists, over andover, that, while his book “is the first
com-prehensive attempt to unlock the secrets ofthe quantitative fundamentals
that define suc-cess and failure in the offensive aspects ofeuchre,” his book
“is not focused on teachingthe reader how to play euchre” (or as he tellsus later, about a third of the way in, “Unlikeother euchre books, the
author will conscien-tiously make the effort to avoid telling youhow to play or
what strategies to use”).

In
fact this book is a lot more about EricZalas and his intellectual and analytic
gifts(“I have been blessed in life with a strongIQ. . . . My top two talents
happen to be an-

alysis and creativity”), and his skill at play-ing poker, than it
is about euchre.In the ear-ly pages,
about 160 “locations” (a “Kindle”term; about 14 pages) are devoted
to the au-thor’s adventures and studies playing poker,and about 15“locations” (about 2 pages) tochanging
strategies in baseball.And mathe-matics.As
for math, he says the understanding that1 + 1 = 2 is not a matter of
definition, or ofobservation or convention, but a propositionthat requires
proof, and that the proof is wellover 300 pages long and wasn't conclusive
un-til the 20th century (he cites Bertrand Russell,who was known better as a
philosopher than amathematician).

This
guy may be a very good euchre player,and he appears to know the math; but, as said,he has disavowed the role of instructor. Andif he is going to continue his role as an author,he would do well
to engage a copy editor.Heseems to
think that some nouns require apostro-

There are some “Kindle”
problems, too:The“search” box does
not work, and the footnotesare not linked (you have to go to “Sources andNotes” near the back of the book to read foot-notes – that’s OK with a real
book, where flip-ping is easy, but it’s an annoyance in a “Kin-dle”).And
Mr. Zalas' “Z-Score System” is not allthat clear.He wants you to assign a value of

2 to “all other trump” in your
hand.Doesthis mean all other trump collectively
(be-sides bowers, which get 3 apiece), or 2points for each additional
trump card?Speaking of analysis. . . .Except
for some passing references, wefinally get down to euchre (“Chapter 1”) at
“location” 557, some 27 per cent of the wayinto the book.Then he proceeds to computeranalyses of
principles for making trump, or-dering up, going alone, discarding, leading topartner, leading to and through opponents, andwhat to play.At this point the book becomesless
reminiscent of Thomas Gallagher's thanof Fred Benjamin’s Euchre Strategies
(2007).We are told of more than
350,000 hands play-ed by the author by computer simulation, “con-sisting of more
than 12 million distinct bits ofinformation,” with tables and commentary.There’s proof by repetition of simulation
thatit’s not always a good idea to make trump, andthat a 9 of trump is a more
powerful card thanan outside ace.Surprise!

We
are treated to “decision tree analyses techniques” and the“robust
methodologies” the author used in his “professional stra-tegic marketing and
quantitative project work at major corpora-tions like British Petroleum Company,
AT&T, GE Healthcare,Honeywell, and Roche Diagnostics.”“Methodology,” “metho-dologies”:Those are “wonk” words.Real writers, real people,speak of “method”
and “methods.”

There
is a little euchre in the introduction to the book.The au-thor presents a hand of the four
lowest spades (king, queen, 10and 9) and the ace of diamonds, in the age's
hand when the deal-er has turned down the 9 of hearts.A computer proves that it isa positive experience to call spades
trump, and that it is muchriskier to do so if the diamond is the king and not
the ace (butstill positive).An
experienced euchre player does not need thisadvice from a computer, nor does
even an intelligent player withlittle experience.We know that if both bowers and ace of trumpare in an opponent’s hand, we are dead.But that is highly unlike-ly (we don’t need the exact math); and
if the bowers and ace allare in someone else’s hand, there is one
chance in three it is yourpartner’s hand.

Here
are a couple of examples of data we are treated to in Pow-er Euchre:

The
author goes on to describe “archetypes” of the “AgrressivePlayer,” the
“Ultra-Aggressive Player,” the “Solid Player” (andthe “Power Player,” of
course).Which are you?If you can’t fig-ure it out by the charts,
maybe you can figure out whether you area “Good Player” by how often you win.

A
caveat:This book is subtitled Volume
I. . . . Oops! VolumeII came out (July 25, 2016) just before I published this!

The Law and Practice of the Game of Euchre,“by a Professor”
T. B. Peterson & Brothers, Philadelphia, 1862, 134 pp., out of print).

If I had known how many good books had beenwritten on euchre in the late 19th century,
and if theyhad still been in print, I might never have written TheColumbus Book of
Euchre – there would have beenno great need of it.

I have recently, with the help of a collector of an-tique books, been privileged to see
three of theseold euchre books; and they all contain excellent in-struction, even
for today’s game. The only signifi-
cant differences between the game today and thegame as it was are that they played
to only fivepoints in the old days, with a pack of 32 cards (as“Hoyle”
manuals specify even to this day).
Butthe principles of good play are not significantlydifferent.

There were some options in the old days that weno longer recognize – such as
“lapping” (carryingexcess points from one game to the next), “jam-
bone” (a super loner laid face up on the table, al-lowing an opponent to call
the play, and scoringeight points, not four, on a march), and “jamboree”

More striking are the parallels and the similarities.Calling “next”
in first chair was recommended eventhen (that was called “Dutching” in the
19th century,but the term “next” also was in vogue),
as were “or-dering at the bridge,” “donation” (but not so called),
“crossing” (calling a suit of the color opposite of thatturned down, in second chair), “sucking in”
(but notso called – that is, “bagging” a good hand at the dealto
induce your left hand opponent to call “next”),promoting a face card with
a lower lead from thesame suit, playing second hand low and third handhigh, leading
trump on offense but not on defense,and defending alone (for a four-point euchre).
Someof the early writers even recommended – as I do –calling “next”
in first chair with none of it in your handon occasion.
This is a ploy only recently named the“full Eddy” (after Edmond Hoyle).

Equally striking, in the ancient literature, is the omis-

sion of some of the
colloquial rules we see today –like that dumb Michigan rule requiring a player to
have a trump before he makes it, that not-so-dumbCanadian rule requiring the dealer’s
partner to goalone if he orders up, and that silly and unsophisti-cated option
called “stick the dealer.”
There is noancient history of such.

The earliest euchre book I have had the privilegeof reading is The Law and Practice
of the Gameof Euchre, which says, on the title page, that it is“by a
Professor.” The title on the cover is
Euchreand Its Laws. There is a
later edition (1877), withten additional pages, titled The Laws [sic;
plural,now] and Practice of the Game of Euchre toWhich is Added the Rules for
Playing DrawPoker.

The “Professor,” we are almost sure, was oneCharles Henry Wharton Meehan,
head of the lawlibrary of the Library of Congresss and son of theLibrarian of Congress,
John Silva Meehan, who

was an appointee and devotee of Andrew Jackson.

Charles Meehan died in 1872, five years beforepublication of the second edition of the
“Professor’s”book. We are
guessing that his publisher or familyor executor merely carried on.

As well they should have. The Professor’s
writingwas superb. Here are some samples:

“In playing the game on the Mississippi River, ifthe player who plays alone is euchred,
the steamer isstopped at the first landing and the unlucky player isput ashore.
In the State of Arkansas he is carriedout to be hung to the first adjacent tree, without
benefit of clergy.”

“So if your hand . . . should happen to be as redas the saints’ days in a
Romish calendar, or as blackas the concentrated essence of midnight, when the
opposite colors are trumps, pursue the even tenorof your play, with placid demeanor –
with columbine

“It may hap, once in while, that you will find your-self associated with a partner
who is a novice in thephilosophy and mysteries of our noble game; andwhen you begin
to perceive that he is one of thoseunfortunate individuals of neglected erudition, whose
intense ignorance of the play is disheartening – dis-playing the most marvelous
ingenuity in preventingyou from winning, and a cruelly tantalizing facility in
helping your opponents to defeat you – smile, if youcan.
We always do.Illuc Ionicus.”
That is, don’tcomplain about your partner, either!

The “Professor” was fond of quoting from Latinand French, and Shakespeare
and Pope; and thatmight throw off a number of today’s readers.

And I take it back:The Columbus Book
of

Euchre did need to be written – but not for avoid-
ance of Latin, or French, or Shakespeare or Pope.
It needed to be written because it was the first bookever written on euchre,
including numerous manualsof “Hoyle,”
that recognized that real people playeuchre to ten points with a deck of 24 cards.

That is not to disparage the “Professor” one whit:
He wrote of the game as it was played in his time,and he did it well.

The “Professor’s” research satisfied him that theFrench had virtually
nothing to do with the origin ofeuchre, and that it was a German game (although he
was puzzled about the origin of the word “euchre” –which was not
adequately explained until 1990 andthe publication of David Parlett’s Oxford
Guide toCard Games, in which euchre was traced to theearly 19th century game of
Jucker in the Germanicregion Alsace).
Some of the later euchre writers ofthe 19th century, including John Keller and the
anon-ymous author of Euchre: How to Play It, were

seduced by notions of French origins; but recentresearch has shown them to have been
mistaken,and the “Professor” to have been right.

thor was unidentified, unless it was the same as thepublisher) –
contained four pages on euchre, whichwas identified as “a German game.”
Five pages ofprinted instructions on euchre are found also in abook published by
Isaac M. Moss in 1844, a yearearler, also in Philadelphia, A Whist
Player’s HandBook, by Thomas Mathews.
The game describedin those books was very much like the game weknow today but for
the usual archaisms, such asplaying to five points, with 32 cards.

Dealing in twos and threes was the way even wayback then, and “ordering at the bridge”
was one ofthe ploys described. Going alone was
called “cardsaway,” as it was alternately in the “Professor’s”
andother books of the 19th century; but the principle wasthe same as now.

Not only is the author of this book not identified,but also the copyright page is undated.
One of theintroductory pages bears a dedication, “To E. J. E.,
in Remembrance of ‘a Lone Hand,’ in London,1886”; and that could be an
indication of the dateof publication.

This book copies liberally from the “Professor’s”
book, and maybe that’s why the author’s name isnot revealed.
The 29-page chapter “Hints to Tyros”is lifted virtually verbatim, without a
hint of a creditto the “Professor.” Either
it is blatant plagiarism, orit is a case of the “Professor’s” executors, heirs
orpublishers themselves extending their prior publica-tion to the British Empire.

But the author takes issue with some of the “Pro-fessor’s” pronouncements:
For example, the “Pro-fessor” had suggested that the opponents should get
four points for euchring a lone hand; and the authorof this book points out the folly
of such a proposition.

And there is new material in this book: For
onething, it introduces us to “railroad euchre,” which maybe the first
euchre game played to ten points (but itwas played with a 33-card pack, including a
jokeras “best bower”), and to “French euchre” (a mis-nomer) and
“Napoleon,” both played with a 24-card pack.

And this book gives us our first glimpse of stealingthe deal, in its presentation
of the rules: “If a deal ismade
out of turn, it is good, provided it be not dis-covered before the dealer has discarded,
and theeldest hand has led.”

This book has a tedious eight-page description of“progressive” (tournament)
euchre; but that is offsetwith a delightful little euchre story, about a
priggishparson who is seduced by a comely widow with acard game.
Other features are a 91-entry “Diction-ary of Technical Terms” (exceeding the
“Profes-sor’s” by a dozen) and a comprehensive index.

J. Todd Martin – a reader and avid player inLondon, Ohio – found on E-Bay
a copy of JohnW. Keller's The Game of Euchre, published byFrederick
A. Stokes of New York in 1887. Todd
bought it, and he was kind enough to share it withme.
Thus began our quest for ancient euchre books.

How much Todd paid for this rare book is confi-dential, but I think I am at liberty
to say that it costhim more than The Columbus Book of Euchre,Joseph D.
Andrews’ The Complete Win at Eu-chre and John Ellis’ Euchre:
The Grandpa LouWay combined.

Joe Andrews would not call Keller’s work a“book,” I’m afraid:
It’s only 82 pages long, with78 pages of text.
Compare that to The ColumbusBook of Euchre with 90 pages (75 of text, also not
a “book”) and Joe’s book with 171 pages (151 oftext).
And Keller’s work contains only 28 lines tothe page, compared to 30 in Joe’s
and 38 in TheColumbus Book of Euchre.
By conversion toKellerian for common denomination, we get Kel-

ler, 78; Bumppo, 102 (now I have a book!), andAndrews, 162.

The “Professor’s” 1862 book is less dense yettypographically, with 24 lines
to the page and nar-rower columns; and the anonymous Euchre: Howto Play It,
even less dense, with 22 lines and yetnarrower columns.
So reckoning by page numbersis not a true comparison of relative “thickness.”
Counting text pages only and adjusting for typo-graphical density, we find the
“Professor’s” bookcontaining only 93 pages on the “Kellerian”
scale,and the anonymous contemporary of Keller’s book,only 88.

How is it, then, that Keller and Bumppo foundthe space to lay out rules for two-handed
euchre,and Joe and others did not? (I received
an e-mailonce asking what the rules are for two-handed eu-chre.
I suggested that the writer might like to pur-chase my book.
Then I felt bad. Perhaps he hadspent
all his disposable earnings on Joe’s book, andwas disheartened.)

But I digress. Keller’s The Game
of Euchre isquite an interesting book, for its antiquity.
The mostinteresting thing about all these 19th century books isthat euchre, it
seems, has not changed all that much inthe last century and a generation.
Keller, like his pred-ecessors, describes a game played to five points with32 cards
– but so do modern “Hoyle” encyclopedias.

Keller’s book is a little top-heavy in rules:
Twenty-four pages – nearly a third of the book – are devotedto the basic
rules of the game. Four pages are
devo-ted to definitions. Another 34
pages – nearly half thebook – are devoted to rules of variations of the game.
Only nine pages are devoted to strategy (compared tothe “Professor’s” 30
pages of “Hints to Tyros” (mostof them
copied in the 29-page chapter of the same titlein the anonymous book).

The remaining seven pages of Keller’s are devotedto history and sociology.
And that’s pretty interesting.Keller seems to have thought that “the
French settlers

of America brought triomphe with them and trans-formed it into euchre.”
Today we know better – weknow that the Pennsylvania Dutch brought Jucker
from Alsace and that some influential writers mis-spelled it “euchre,” possbily
in part because of theinfluence of the French game écarté (a derivative
of triomphe) on Jucker. (The
“Professor” creditedthe Pennsylvania Dutch.)

Besides, we all know now – thanks to 9/11 andGeorge W. Bush – that
there were no “French set-tlers” of “America.”
We ran them all off to Canada.

Keller does not shy from his proposition, however.
His variations include games called “French euchre”and “Napoleon,”
which he calls “a French variationof euchre” (so much for the assertion of
Keller’s con-temporary R. F. Foster that “The French know
nothing about euchre in any form” !).

The “French euchre” described by Keller and his

anonymous contemporary (the author of Euchre:How to Play It)
did reduce the deck to 24 cards,the deck most people play with today.
But youplayed to 15 and made trump by bidding, not byordering, picking up or
naming.

“Napoleon,” better known as “Nap,” has somesimilarities to
euchre; but it’s a separate game.
Andit’s British, not French.
David Parlett, in The Ox-ford Guide to Card Games, notes that Nap was
“widely recorded in European gamebooks as a sim-plification of Euchre –
though ‘an elaboration ofRams’ would be more like it. . . . ”
(rams is yetanother game, possibly of German origin).

Nap, Parlett says, “evidently commemorates Na-poleon III, who retired to Britain
after losing theFranco-Prussian war in 1870, and has since beendescribed as
‘the nearest thing Europe ever pro-duced to a river boat gambler,’ ”
quoting anotherauthor, Edmond Taylor.

“Napoleon has long enjoyed particular socialstatus as Britain’s national five-card game,” Parlettadds.

The Napoleon described by Keller seems to bemore a euchristic variation of Nap
than a Napoleonicvariation of euchre.
I’m stickin’ with Foster: The
French, like Joe Andrews, know nothing about eu-chre, in any form.

Have you ever run into a Frenchman playing euchreon Yahoo?
I haven’t. I’ve encountered a
lot of Can-adians, Brits, Aussies and New Zealanders, and evenItalians, Swedes and
Poles, but never a Frenchman.Never even a Quebecois.

There are some intriguing differences between thebasic euchre the 19th century authors
describe andthe euchre we know today (besides the 32-card deckand the five-point game):

For one thing, you could go alone on your partner’s

prior call.
For example, if the first or second play-er ordered or assisted or named trump, his partner
could take the ball and run with it. That sure
elimi-nated those “Damn, p, I had a loner!” cavils.
(Viceversa was not allowed: The dealer’s
partner couldnot go alone on the dealer’s call, nor the first playeron third’s.)

For another, they reported plays called “jambone”and “jamboree.”
A “jambone” was a strong lonehand that the holder laid down on the table
face up.His left-hand opponent could dictate the lead or theloner’s
play on the lead. Thus one did not want to
“jambone” with a marginal loner.
But if you tookall five tricks with a “jambone,” you got eight points,
not just four.

What could you do with eight points in a five-pointgame?
Well, that’s where “lapping” came in.
Youcould “lap” excess points from one game to the next.
(Not everyone played these options; and, obviously,they fell by the wayside.)

A “jamboree” was a “perfect” hand:
Both bowersand ace, king and queen of trump.
It was worth 16points.

Keller described also a game called “set-back eu-chre” – which he
called the “least popular variation”– that is very similar to the
bid euchre of today inwhich everyone begins with 15 points and plays tozero (in
those days they began with 5).

One more thing: The “progressive”
euchre de-scribed by Keller and his anonymous contemporarywas not the same
thing as the “8 by 8” formula pro-moted by Grand Prix Cowboy Joe, in which 64
players play eight rounds of eight hands each, allplayers moving on to other tables
after eight handsregardless of whether anyone has reached a scoreof ten.
In the old version (still played today) therewas a “head table” that dictated
length of play byhow long it took that table to finish a game.
At theother tables, the winners were whoever were aheadwhen the head table
finished (ties were broken by

cutting cards). Players then
moved up or down to other tables, depending on winning or losing.
In some variations there was some switching of partners when the new tables were set.
Ultimate winners were determined by games won, not by total points scored.
(Loners were not allowed in Keller’s version.)

Since the scoring was by games, and not by points, the original “progressive
euchre” actually was a lot like euchre, unlike the “8 by 8 progressive”
format of today.

This pocket book contains, first, 32 (Kellerian)pages on the two-handed French card game
écartéand then, in a second section, 43 (Kellerian) pageson euchre.

The pseudonymous author makes an argument, inthe one-page preface of the section on euchre,
that it“may be fairly described as an Americanized speciesof Écarté;
in fact, the name is said to be a corruptionof that French word.
According to some accounts itwas first played by the French settlers in Louisiana . . . .”

Later scholarship has disproved such notions.
Wenow know that euchre in its origin was a German gamecarried to America by
the Pennsylvania Dutch, fromAlsace, not from the heart of France.
“Berkeley’s”book is probably largely responsible for the mistaken
notion that the French carried the game of euchre toPennsylvania up the Mississippi
and Ohio rivers fromNew Orleans rather than its flowing down the riversfrom Pennsylvania, which was much more likely thecase.

Be that as it may, the author continues, “Althoughsimilar in many respects to
Écarté, the system of thegame [of euchre] is far more elaborate” and
“in itsphraseology and its method of play is peculiarly A-merican.
Boldness, self-reliance and cuteness aresome of the requisites of a good euchre player.”

He’s right about that – except for the phraseology,much of which has German
roots: “bower” from
“Bauer,” “march” from
“Marsch,” and “euchre”
and “joker” from “Jucker.”

Some of the similarities between écarté andeuchre were, indeed, striking:
The 32-card deck(omitting deuces through sixes), dealing five-cardhands in twos and
threes, and making trump byturning a card rather than by bidding.
But a numberof European card games of the period used that 32-card deck:Piquet is one that survives (hardly any-one plays écarté any more).
And écarté was strictlya two-handed game – and one in which jacks were
not boss.

Aside from the historical error, the book containssome solid instruction.
But a drawback is that morethan half the euchre section of the book is devoted toa
description of, and instruction on, two-handed eu-chre, which no one plays today if
there are three ormore players available; and another six pages are de-voted to a
form of three-handed euchre that hardlyanyone plays any more even when four players are
not available.

Much of the two- and three-handed instruction isvalid, in principle, for the four-handed
version; but theultimate failure of the book, insofar as it might other-wise be valuable
to a student or player of today’sgame, is that it concentrates highly on mathematical
probabilities. The book even contains half a
dozenprobability tables regarding the values of certain hold-ings.
There’s nothing wrong with that in concept – anumber of players crave
arithmetical odds. The prob-

lem is, the probabilities stated are, in the main, obso-lete.
Probabilities applying to a five-point game aredifferent from those applying to a ten-point
game(today’s norm); probabilities applying to a gameplayed with a 32-card deck
are different from thoseapplying with a 24-card deck (today’s norm), and
probabilities applying to a two-handed game playedto five with a 32-card deck are greatly different
fromthose applying to a four-handed game played to tenwith a 24-card deck.

The text is interspersed with numerous graphic ex-amples of possible five-card holdings,
and instructionas to what to do with them if they should happen to bedealt to you,
with a certain trump turned, and at certainscores.
But almost all that instruction is couched inthose archaic probabilities.
Unfortunately what mayhave been a valuable book in its own day is now oflargely historical
interest only.top

Despite the similar title to the British publication ofabout 1886, and somewhat similar
contents, this is notquite the same book – although it appears to havecopied
the pattern of that earlier book.

It’s tiny – “pocket-sized,” they say; and it really willslide into
a vest pocket, or even a shirt pocket if youdon’t mind the top sticking out about
an inch – 5¼inches tall by 2¾ inches wide.
It contains no historyof the game.

But it’s crammed full of description and rules ofeuchre – which means the
print is tiny, and a littlehard to read.
And scanning it, one might be amazedhow little the game has changed over the last
century.The backings displayed from a Bicycle deck are thesame we know today,
and so is the trademark ace ofspades.

“The game is five points,” it is written; but also,“Or, if agreed upon
by the players, ten points.” The
game is said to be played with 32 cards (33 if a jo-ker is added):
But it is mentioned also, “Another

point to which little attention has been called is thatthe American
players almost universally discard thesevens, and many of them the eights, from
the pack. . . .” So, the
24-card deck was on its way.

Rules are given for two-handed, three-handed andfour-handed euchre.
The three-handed game is notthe “buck” or bid euchre that many of us are
familiarwith, but a regular game of euchre in which the makeralways goes alone and
the other two players team upagainst him (and the maker gets three points for amarch,
not two or four).

There is a “five-handed euchre” described, howev-er, that is a bit like bid or
“buck” euchre, with pointsoff for tricks taken until the winner goes out at
zero;but there is no bidding in it to name trump.
Trump ismade by the turn of a card from the stock; and thereis no ordering, assisting,
picking up, calling, or argu-ment. What
is turned is trump, and that’s it. This
game is about the same as the “set-back euchre” de-scribed in the British book
of similar title.

There is also a “six-handed euchre” described,played by two teams of three
partners each, to 25points, in which trump is made by bidding – that is,each
player bids how many tricks his team will makeif allowed to call trump, and the high
bider gets theprivilege of naming trump.
Then there’s an “auctioneuchre,” for four players, with partnerships,
in whichtrump is made by bidding.

There’s “blind euchre,” for three, four or fivepeople, which involves
trading two cards of one’shand for a two-card blind dealt to the table.
There’salso “railroad euchre,” found also in the earlier Britishbook.
Railroad euchre was almost always played toten points, it was usually played with a joker
as “bestbower,” and it usually featured “lapping” – allowing a
winning team to carry excess points over to the nextgame.
It also allowed a player going alone to call forhis partner’s best card and discard
one of his own inexchange, and allowed an opponent to do the samewith his
partner and defend alone for a 4-pointeuchre.

Options of “lapping,” “jambone” and “jamboree”are offered
for application in almost all the games.These options have been described in
reviews of oth-er old books – see, for example, my review of JohnW.
Keller’s The Game of Euchre.
(The book underreview and the British book of nearly the same title be-fore it speak
also of a “slam,” which is nothing morethan what we would call a
“skunk” today.)

The rules set out for the four-handed game in thisbook are substantially those we know
today (inclu-ding the rules for going alone, and an allowance ofstealing the deal).

The rules and description of four-handed euchrecomprise 5½ pages, which is a plenty.
Two-handedand three-handed euchre take a page apiece.
There'sa four-page chapter on “progressive euchre,” which isa tournament
formula for 12 or more players, and notthe same thing as the “8 by 8 progressive”
format foundin some present tournaments (in which 64 players playeight rounds
of eight hands each, all players moving on

to other tables after eight hands regardless of whether anyone has reached a score of ten
points, and in which the winners are determined by points scored, not by games won).

All the foregoing takes 20½ pages of this 34-page book, which finishes with 13½
pages of “Hints,” or strategy.
The strategy chapter in the British book of similar title was “Hints to Tyros,”
and they were nearly verbatim the same as the “Hints to Tyros” in the
“Professor’s” 1862 book The Law and Practice of
the Game of Euchre. The “Hints”
in this book are not the same thing; but they’re pretty standard stuff, including
“next” and “ordering at the bridge.”
There is no new thing under the euchre sun.

There are no sample hands displayed or discussed in this book.

The “Hints,” although standard, are rigorously presented and excellent,
and as good today as they were a hundred years ago.
This is as good a compact euchre book as I have seen, and all one would ever need.
Too bad it’s out of print.

Discover Euchre is a very well producedvideotape of very
basic instruction on how toplay euchre.
It is very colorful, and very clean(even the players’
fingernails are very clean.And the players
themselves – two young menand two young women – are
pretty, andclean.
There are no crumpled paper cups orbeer stains on the carpet –
not even any drinksor ashtrays on the table).
Other than that, notmuch to say:
A little humor, no esoterica.

There are a couple of mistakes:
Jeff shouldhave gone alone at 18:00 (but Pam should
have picked up so he couldn’t have).
AndMike explains, at 23:00, that the lead is to
the lone hand instead of from the lone hand(which
otherwise would have had the lead)

because allowing the loner to lead would giveher
“an unfair advantage.”
That is Hoyle (insome versions), but it’s not the
reason (andit’s not the way they play in Southern
Indiana).Being led to is, arguably, as big an
advantageas leading.
If you want to cripple the loner,put him in the middle so that he
is led through.The way they play in Columbus, the
lead fallswith the position:
It’s simply easier to make aloner from some positions than
from others.

And Mike tells us that the penalty for re-neging is a 2-point
subtraction from yourscore.
That’s not even Hoyle; almost every-where they add
the penalty to the other team’sscore.
Ah, those northern Hoosiers!
Maybethey’re just too close to Michigan!